Payment cards such as credit cards and debit cards are very widely used for all forms of financial transaction. The use of payment cards has evolved significantly with technological developments over recent years. Originally, transactions were on paper, using an imprint of a transaction card and confirmed by a signature. This approach was largely replaced by use of a magnetic stripe of a transaction card swiped through a magnetic stripe reader on a point of sale (POS) terminal to perform a transaction. Transaction cards developed to contain an integrated circuit (“chip cards” or “smart cards”) communicate with a smart card reader in the POS terminal. Using this approach, a transaction is typically confirmed by a personal identification number (PIN) entered by the card user. Cards of this type typically operate under the EMV standard for interoperation of chip cards and associated apparatus (such as POS terminals and ATMs). ISO/IEC 7816 provides a standard for operation of cards of this type.
Technology has further developed to provide payment cards which operate contactlessly—under EMV, these are covered under the ISO/IEC 14443 standard. Using such cards, the account number can be read automatically from the card by a POS terminal, generally using a short range wireless technology such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)—this approach is generally referred to as “contactless” or “proximity” payment. This is typically enabled by embedding of an RFID tag in a card body together with a suitable antenna to allow transmission and receipt of wireless signals—the transmissions may be powered by a radio frequency interrogation signal emitted by a proximity reader in the POS terminal. For an effective connection to be made, the payment card may need to be brought into very close proximity to the proximity reader—this has security benefits and prevents confusion if there are multiple enabled payment cards in the general vicinity of the proximity reader, as will typically be the case in a retail establishment for example. This may be achieved by tapping the antenna of the payment card against the proximity reader of the POS terminal.
The present applicants have developed a proprietary system, known as PayPass®, for performing contactless transactions. The present applicants have also appreciated that it would be possible to use a computing device such as a mobile telephone as a proxy for a payment card. They have also developed a mobile payment application, Mobile PayPass™, which can be downloaded to a mobile cellular telephone handset (hereafter “mobile phone”) to act as a proxy for a payment card using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology standards, which are built in to the majority of current mobile phones. NFC is a development upon RFID, and NFC-enabled devices are able to operate in the same manner as RFID devices—though an NFC-device is active rather than passive, as it is powered by the mobile phone battery rather than relying on inductive pickup from a reader device. Using Mobile PayPass™, a user can conduct tapping based transactions with a proximity reader, as well as perform account management operations over an appropriate network interface (cellular, local wireless network) in an online banking interface with the user's account provider.
With the ever expanding capabilities of personal computers, laptops, tablets and other consumer devices to support more and more communications channels, products are now being developed with NFC and proximity communications channels as a standard feature. It would be desirable to use this new capability to improve the consumer experience when conducting payment or authentication related processes using personal computing devices.